The present invention relates to digital networks, and in particular, to the problem of initiating traffic in peer-to-peer tunnels in switched digital systems.
Modern digital networks operating under IEEE 803.2 and 802.11 standards are called upon to support a wide range of wired and wireless clients.
Traffic between clients in a mobility domain typically passes from the originating client to an access node, and then from the access node to a controller through a tunnel. The traffic then passes through another tunnel from the controller to the destination access node, and to the destination client. Traffic passing through the controller may be subject to firewalling, deep packet inspection, authentication, and similar processes.
These processes, and the trip from one access node to another through the controller take time, particularly when the controller and the access nodes may not reside in the same building, or even the same general locale. Properly authenticated traffic may be eligible for peer-to-peer forwarding. In peer-to-peer forwarding, as described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/429,981 titled “Peer-to-Peer Forwarding for Packet-Switched Traffic” filed Apr. 24, 2009, and incorporated by reference herein, a tunnel is established between the two access nodes, and traffic sent through this peer-to-peer tunnel.
Visualizing the peer-to-peer tunnel as a short, fast pipe, and the controller-terminated tunnels as a long, slow pipe, the transition of traffic from the slow pipe to the fast pipe may result in issues such as out-of-order arrival of packets, with fast pipe packets arriving at the destination before packets already in the slow pipe. While some applications may not be affected by such out-of-order arrival, other applications such as multimedia are affected, resulting in, for example, stuttered or dropped audio and/or video.